Sugar on a Stick/FAQ

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Frequently Asked Questions about Sugar on a Stick

Post questions here for the Sugar on a Stick project team.

What do I have to get to make it work

At this point Sugar on a Stick deployment is in Beta, starting its first pilot at a school in Boston. We would welcome other pilots, but this is still technology in its early stages. You will need a technical person who can interface with the Sugar community to make it work.

How much does each stick cost?

You will need a 1 or 2-GB stick for each student. Check your local computer store for prices. Right now its about $8 USD. To deploy on a large scale you will also need either very dedicated volunteers or a bulk copy device. We are using one from NeXcopy that retails for about $1200. You should also budget for some USB stick loss.

Do you have a space where there is information in a concise, easy to digest format?

I don't have a tremendous amount of time to float around your website.

Can I try some of it out?

The full software package can be downloaded from http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry. You can use this download to install Sugar on a Stick onto a USB flash memory drive and test it out.

Is the platform another cost?

We refer to the Sugar Learning Platform as platform because it is a complete software environment for learning. You will need a computer to run Sugar on a Stick, and you will also want an administrator's computer for the School Server, XS. The server software is free, but also in a Beta testing phase. The School Server does not need to be high powered, a $500 to $1000 hardware budget should be sufficient for a pilot program.

Is it learning games, homework help, search engines?

It provides a consistent, child friendly environment with learning games, software for music, graphics, text, and software creation, a calculator and physics modeling Activities, an Internet browser and chat programs, and a slice of Wikipedia for offline exploration. The software on the portable memory device allows students to have the same learning tools at school and at home. The teacher can use it to assign help, but its not in itself provide homework help. The web browser can be used as a search engine.

Is running the SoaS Beta on a netbook a real alternative to XOs with Build 767 when it comes to classroom settings?

It is still in Beta and we feel very strongly about not overselling it. However, it is an alternative to consider today if you are an early adopter and you set a realistic roll-out plan. It is Beta software so I would set the expectation that the teacher/school would want to pick out which hardware they want, pick out which activities they want to start with and test those and work closely with the community.

The technical results and the excitement of the educators at FOSSVT was encouranging. Based on discussions at FOSSVT and others who have posted, we are confident that Sugar will be in classroom use on netbooks and on existing computer labs in Q3 2009.

What hardware is it known to work on and what are the known hardware releated bugs?

computer	comments
OLPC-XO-1	Works (but doesn't support all XO features, such as power management, special keys)
Intel Classmate	Works great on the Magellan version
HP Compaq 6715b	Works great
Acer Aspire One	Works
Toshiba Satellite	Works great; boots very quickly
IBM Thinkpad X60	Works great
IBM Thinkpad T43	Works great
Eee PC 900A	Works great
Dell Latitude 600	No network due to proprietary driver
Dell Latitude 610	Network with Intel Pro Wireless works

Please add your results to the table above.

Have the resolution issues, which used to be a major issue w/ running Sugar on a non-XO, been solved?

While not every activity has been modified, most now accommodate variable screen sizes. All of the activities at http://activities.sugarlabs.org work at variable sizes and resolutions as far as I know.

What about font sizes?

This is also fixed in Sucrose 0.84

Do all the activities (incl. collaboration) work reliably on SoaS these days?

Collaboration on SoaS is as robust as collaboration anywhere. (There is a Google Summer of Code project that will be addressing one general issue of collaboration robustness--this will be relevant to SoaS and non-SoaS deployments.)

There are some Network Manager issues that need to be worked out in general regarding Sugar on non-OLPC kernels, but this impacts connectivity, not collaboration.

We saw some issues at FOSSVT on some laptops and netbooks accessing wireless, others worked great.

As you pointed out development is going very quickly right now. As we take this out into the world we are finding and fixing bugs. Our main goal right now is to get volunteers to help us do this and keep track of what hardware is working.

Does SoaS allow for power-management to kick in on netbooks?

Yes, but currently not the special OLPC XO features.

What exactly are the networking and audio issues that Walter described in yesterday's Sugar-Digest?

AFAIK, the audio problems are fixed in the new Beta.

We have found some issues with connectivity with a small number of machines--this seems to be a Fedora issue, not a Sugar issue, and is being worked on upstream.

Does Sugar on a Stick work on the OLPC XO Hardware

For the OLPC XO hardware, we are targeting F12 as the timeframe for a general release. In the meantime, on that hardware, we recommend the 80X series of builds from OLPC. But by all means, please test SoaS on your XO hardware (you'll need a developer key); see Sugar on a Stick/Installation/OLPC and give us feedback.